


From The Fertile Untamed Mind

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: A/B/O but almost everybody is Beta and almost everybody else is latent, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, that awkward moment when you accidentally kidnap somebody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23199757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: Wherein Boba Fett is rescued from the Sarlacc pit and makes a series of completely rational decisions regarding his nurse, which somehow results in kidnapping her.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look sometimes you just have a bunch of ideas that don't fit any of the character dynamics you're currently working with, so you bundle them and toss them at a different character you're only familiar with from fanon!

Somebody is touching his hand.

He is flat on his back, his helmet is off. He is in pain but in a vague, distant way that suggests he's been drugged, and somebody is touching him.

Boba makes a reflexive grab before even opening his eyes, and is rewarded with a sharp gasp and a narrow wrist in his grip. The owner tries to yank it away, but he tightens his hand and they still.

His arm is in a heavy leather cuff just above his elbow, so he can only move his lower arm, which she apparently untied so she could change dressings. His other arm and both his legs are similarly restrained, so he isn't about to let go of what little leverage he's managed to gain. Boba drags open his eyes to groan at bright lighting, the grey deckhead of a ship. A ship's infirmary, at a guess.

He turns his hand to tow whoever is attached to that wrist into his field of vision.

She's short, clad in light green scrubs, with black hair in tiny braids, tied back, and deep brown skin that looks washed out and grey in the bright lighting. Her brown eyes are huge and fixed on him.

"Mr F-fett," she says, voice low and a hoarse. "You are in the infirmary of an Alderanian cruiser. I'm Sephi. I'm attempting to neutralise the Sarlacc acid..." she trails off as he looks her up and down. There are extra dark shadows on her throat. A large hand shape. And her voice—

"I do that?"

"W-what?"

"Your throat."

She looks surprised that he's noticed.

"You were very disoriented the first time you woke up, and in a great deal of pain."

Her gaze drops to his hand, still holding her gloved wrist, though he's eased his grip somewhat. He slowly uncurls his fingers, and she takes a deep breath when he lets go of her, flexing her fingers.

"Sorry," he murmurs, because no matter anything else, he isn't the kind of asshole who purposely hurts the person who is just trying to fix him up.

"Can I continue?" she asks, indicating the unbound arm, and he nods.

She finishes applying some kind of salve with a sponge and wrapping his arm in a type of salved dressing. What he can see of the skin as she changes it looks bad, parts of it blackened, and it would probably be screaming agony if they weren't drugging him. He'll give Organa that. She won't let even an enemy suffer more than needed. The medic puts the restraint back on his wrist.

"Sorry about these."

Boba shrugs. If he's on an alliance ship he's a captive. Makes sense they'd restrain him, especially if he hurt somebody earlier.

Focusing on this woman with her cool, steady hands is preferable over thinking about just about anything else, so he hazily keeps watching her while she works, quickly and efficiently changing dressings. When she's done, she stands by his head.

"I'm going to turn you over. Don't worry, okay? This is like flipping a grilled cheese."

"Huh?"

"You know, in one of those cast iron things for over the campfire."

She grins and brings down a padded surface over top of him, with a cutout for his face. It lightly presses down on him and then locks it in place. He hears something activate and the mattress somehow _rotates_ , until he is on his stomach on that new surface, staring at the floor through the face cutout. Sephi lifts away the side he'd been resting on so she can unpeel the dressings on his back and change them.

The flipping over would be funny if he wasn't feeling so damn vulnerable. Not only is he still completely restrained and exposed, but now he can't even see around himself.

"No bacta?" he asks, trying to distract himself and keep track of her position.

"It's acid, it would kill off the bacta," she explains. "The stuff I'm using now neutralises the acid, and I clean. Once the acid is actually gone you'll get bacta treatment and the burns will heal, though you'll have scars."

"Right."

"Can I leave you like this for a while? It's good to take the pressure off these big burns for a bit."

"Please don't," Boba grits out.

She doesn't.

She's being… _nice_ to him. Professional, but more friendly than expected. Boba isn't used to that and certainly not here. A vague plan forms. If he can get her to like him, to sympathise with him, he might be able to use that later. He should try to connect with her as much as he can.

"Now you're awake, can I put you on a painkiller drip?" she asks when he's facing up again.

He stares at her, because the concept of being asked is... unexpected. He'd expected to just be drugged out of his mind in the tenderloving care of the rebel alliance.

"Don't knock me out," he says, frowning.

"I won't. I'll put you on a base dose and give you a button that you can press when the pain gets too much. That okay?"

Boba nods, stunned by the consideration. She puts the needle in and rigs up a drip, putting a sort of clicker in his fingers. He pushes the button once, and after a moment feels a tiny wave of ease in the pain, so he pushes it twice more.

She's _nice_. He isn't sure why, but he appreciates it.

"I might be nice, but you're _definitely_ high," she says, so perhaps he said that out loud. Huh.

There's an undetermined period of time where he just floats. The next thing he knows, Sephi is back by his bed, and she's in a different colour scrubs, her hair different too. All the tiny braids are caught up together in a big braid. Must be a new day. Did he sleep that long?

"Do they just keep sending you back in here alone even after I..." he nods at her neck. "Seems… kinda.. heartless, without backup."

His concern—was it concern? He supposes so—seems to amuse her a little.

"I'll let the Princess know about your concern for our labour practices."

He huffs. Princess. Organa really had him picked up?

"This is a cruiser's infirmary, not a core hospital. Not a surplus of qualified people to do this."

"Hm. How did you.. when I first woke...?" he can't quite figure out how to word this, but she seems to understand well enough.

"You got the bantha shot." She turns her back to him enough that he can see an orange pressure injector held securely in a beltloop in the small of her back.

"You shouldn't show me that, Sephi," he tells her seriously. "I could... you shouldn't.. show me that. Are you not scared? 'M dangerous.."

"I was when you grabbed me," she admits. "But it's hard to be scared when you're giving me safety tips."

Okay. She has a point.

"Are you planning to grab it and inject me?" she asks, curious rather than concerned.

"No," he admits. For one thing, he's too weak to stand, and he's not about to escape to let acid eat away at him when he could stay and get healed much better than he could do himself. For another, even if he did plan to get up and get out of there with violence, she's—she's not a large woman. Shoving her onto the floor would be faster, and carry less risk of accidentally killing her than injecting a woman half his size with a tranquilizer intended for a 220 pound man.

And he's not about to do either of those things if he thinks there's a chance she'll help him.

"But somebody else... you really shouldn't..." the pain is increasing, and it's getting harder to find words. "Should be a decoy. Mm. Keep the real stuff somewhere.. somewhere else..." He gives in and pushes the button.

"I'll consider it. Flipping you over now."

It's physically comfortable enough to be on his stomach for a while, he just hates how vulnerable it makes him. She offers to sit by the curtained entrance with her paperwork, and oddly enough, that makes him feel better about it, enough to accept it. She even puts down a holopad on the floor for him to watch. It's playing a ridiculously cheesy series, but it's distraction and he's grateful.

It takes a little experimentation, but in the next few days he finds a balance between bearable pain and being moderately lucid.

That does mean he's awake most of the time. And _bored_. Not a lot to focus on except the visits of his carer, who is the only one who talks to him. Gradually the dressings change to bacta treatment; first on his arms and legs. There are some bad spots on his back that seem to take longest, but he's starting to think it's time for his plan.

Escaping when you're on your feet for the first time in several weeks is far from ideal, but it helps to have a hostage. If at first he'd thought that her easy friendliness was a weakness he could exploit, that he could con her, use her—by the time he actually escapes he doesn't think of it that way.

They've been friendly enough, and he's been non-threatening enough, that she's grown a little too easy with the restraints. When he has a whole arm free, he waits for a moment that she's leaning close and suddenly snakes it around her, broad hand covering her mouth, muffling her startled yelp. He pulls her close until her ear is right by his mouth. She whimpers.

"Shhh. Just listen. I'm not going to hurt you. I need to get out before they move me to the brig, I just need you to help me to my ship. Then I'll be out of your life. Okay?"

She makes a little sound of acknowledgement.

"You know where my gear is?"

She gives a tiny nod. He can feel her pulse racing.

"Can you find a way to get it to me without anybody noticing?"

Another little nod.

"I also need enough acid neutraliser and bacta for the next week."

Her hand comes up to point at the kit she brings in whenever she comes to treat his wounds, and it only occurs to him now that she's not… not struggling, or clawing at his grip. Nothing like that. Is that because she's scared he'll break her neck? He couldn't blame her if she were, but after the initial startle when he grabbed her, she seems remarkably calm.

Boba draws in a deep breath. She smells good, like an Omega, though a really latent one. No, focus. This is the moment of truth. Either she calls the alarm as soon as he lets her go or she helps him.

He eases his arm, lets his grip on her go slack, and she slowly rights herself, looking at him with huge eyes. Then she shakes herself a little and her face goes back to her usual friendly-professional expression.

"Just gonna put you partially upright," she says in a low tone, and he watches her as she folds out a footplate from the bed and then uses the control panel to tilt the whole thing toward a standing position. He's still leaning backward, not upright, but enough to prepare him for getting up.

He undoes the rest of his restraints and waits for the lightheadedness to fade. Then he spends a breathless, endless ten minutes waiting to see if she'll come back or if he's about to get dragged to the brig.

She comes back.

It's a fraught journey to the bay where his ship is sitting, his arm around Sephi's throat, using her body as a shield while she carries his box of supplies. He's glad to have his armour on, but the plates press against not-quite-healed skin and he is not as steady on his feet as he would like to be.

He uses her as leverage to get the locks taken off the landing gear. They seem willing to let him go as long as he leaves her behind. _Seem_ being the operative word. She's just here to make sure he makes it to his ship, but he's going to the keep her until the last possible moment to make sure they don't just shoot him on the ramp.

They stun her, the assholes. In hindsight Boba figures it's because they hoped he'd decide it was too much trouble to bring her aboard his ship, even though that wasn't his plan in the first place. He was going to leave her there in the bay. That was the plan.

But in the moment all he does is react to the shot, to the feeling of her body going limp against him. The shock of it spins him slightly off balance and she cracks her head on a handle on her way down. Fuck, they're getting ready to shoot again, he needs to get her out of there. Even injured his reflexes are good enough that he catches her before she can hit the ground. He sprints the last few paces up the ramp with her.

Boba dumps the woman onto his bunk before crashing painfully into his pilot chair and getting the fuck out of there.


	2. Chapter 2

Sephi wakes up in a narrow cot. Before she even opens her eyes she knows she's not on the cruiser anymore; the sounds of this ship are completely different. There's a loud banging somewhere close by, and she groans, trying to remember where she is and coming up with nothing. She's on a hard mattress under a coarse blanket. It smells… familiar somehow, though she can't place it. 

She slowly brings her hand up to her face. There's a bump on the side of her head; she knocked her head on something, though she's not feeling concussed, so it's not clear if that is why she was unconscious. Her head feels fuzzy and confused. How did she get here? And where the hell is here? Opening her eyes doesn't help—everything is blurry. Nothing seems to make sense. 

She has to support herself on the wall to sneak out of the sleeping nook on what has to be a smallish transport ship and realises something far more worrying than the fact that she's apparently been….kidnapped? Is that what's going on? 

Even more concerning is that wherever she is, she doesn't have her suppressants. She's hungry, so she must have been here a while—the clock is ticking. Her last dose of suppressants will be wearing off over the next 24 hours, and within 36 hours her nature will be very apparent and she could even go into spontaneous heat. 

Fuck. 

80% of the population are betas, and of the 10 percent that is omega, the vast majority is considered latent; having little to no expression of their omega nature in their body. Less than one of every hundred is considered a 'natural full Omega' capable of reaching a spontaneous heat and being knotted by an—equally rare—full Alpha. 

The rarity of her nature has always seemed like an abstract fact to Sephi. As long as she is on suppressants, nobody will ever know that she is 'one of _those_ Omegas' and it hasn't ever been relevant apart from disclosing it in her medical files when she started working for the rebel alliance. 

It's suddenly a lot more relevant now. Women like her are rare and thus extremely valuable in the slave trade. She's just groped her way past an escape pod with the designation _Slave I_. No need to guess what this ship's owner will do with her when he finds out. She needs to get out of here. On pure instinct she grabs something that feels like a pipe wrench. She's disoriented and scared, and it feels good to have something heavy and solid in her hand. 

The ship appears to be docked at the moment, and she turns a corner to see a bright square of light. That must be the open ramp. Her eyes won't focus, but it smells like a planet out there, she hears sounds of a spaceport in the distance. She doesn't stop to think if this is actually an improvement, just sees the open exit and goes for it. 

There's cursing behind her, and before she's more than a few meters off the ramp her feet are suddenly trapped and yanked out from under her, and she goes down hard onto the packed dirt, barely managing to get a hand up to protect her face. She scrambles to pull up her knees, trying to get her feet under her, but there's another hard yank stretching her out, and a heavily booted foot shoves her over onto her back. She mindlessly tries to roll away, expecting a kick. The boot lowers onto her torso instead, pinning her down across her midriff. Her breath comes out of her in a wails and she blinks hard, trying to get the man into focus. 

He is in grey and green armour, and no matter how she squints, there's no face, just a greenish blur that's staring impassively down at her. From her low eyeline he is enormous, tree trunks of legs in grey canvas, heavy leather belt, armour plates. Sephi is shaking so hard her teeth might be chattering, whole body flooded with an instinctive fear about what's going to happen now. 

She hears a sigh. He lightens the foot that pins her to the ground, but keeps it in place with the clear message he could exert a lot more pressure if she doesn't stop fighting. 

"Breathe," he orders nonsensically. "I'm not gonna—" Sephi hears something in the distance. Suddenly the man is moving. The foot disappears but before she can register what is happening he has dropped low, crouching next to her with his shin across her hipbones to keep her pinned. He grabs for her wrists, twist the wrench out of her hand before she can get a swing in. Both her wrists in one hand, he reaches for cuffs on his belt, and looks up at a shout in the distance, closer than before. 

"Hey Fett! Looks like you can use a hand with that one!"

The man growls a curse under what she can now see is his helmet.

"Fuck off." It's harsh and menacing, and his hand goes to his blaster. 

Sephi squirms a hand from his distracted grip, and he curses again. He lifts his weight off her hips and harshly shoves her over onto her belly, knee coming down in the small of her back. She sobs into the dirt as he clicks thick metal cuffs first around one wrist, then the other.

"Act like a bounty, get treated like a bounty," he growls, and something inside her quails at that tone. The fight goes out of her. 

She gasps when he picks her up and slings her over his shoulder with a grunt. He trudges up the ramp and she hears him slam a button to close behind him. He lowers her face-down to the metal deckplates. The man scoops a gloved hand under her cheek to turn her face to the side to make sure she can breathe, and settles into the pilot seat to get them in the air.

Sephi tries not to move or make a sound, anything that might further aggravate him. This man is definitely an Alpha, and a strong one at that, perhaps even a full one. Her problems might be even more immediate than the slave trade. She can't help the tears trailing their way through the dust on her face, no matter how hard she keeps her eyes closed. 

Some indeterminable amount of time later she feels the jump into hyperspace and hears a creak as his chair turns toward her. She can't help reflexively opening her eyes when she hears his boots, even though she can't see further up than his shin plates at this angle and everything further than a foot or two in front of her face is blurry. His armour creaks when he squats down next to her. 

He untangles whatever was still wrapped around her shins, and then slips an arm through her bound arms, pulling her up and lifting her with a grunt. A moment later she's sitting in the pilot seat with her hands still cuffed behind her, trapped between her back and the seat. 

The man stands between her knees, blocking her into the chair. He puts his ungloved hand under her jaw to tilt her face up to him. Then he turns away, and a moment later he's back with something cool and damp to wipe her face. He's unexpectedly gentle and patient, not scrubbing at her abraded skin, just wiping lightly until the dirt and dried blood softens and comes away. 

Sephi's panic finally quiets down under his calm touch, even though there is still plenty of reason to fear if she doesn't get suppressants soon. 

She's currently not capable of being worried about it. His hand on her jaw feels good, and she mindlessly leans into his touch. 

"You know who I am now?" He doesn't sound threatening anymore, he just sounds tired. 

She doesn't want to guess and risk angering him again, but her silence seems to make it clear enough. He lets go of her and she hears him unseal and take off his helmet. He puts it aside and then seems to wait for her to say something. She blinks hard, but he's mostly a face-shaped blur. 

"Mhh, that's a face," she manages, paying close attention to how her lips and tongue shape the sounds. "Prrrobably." 

"You can't see?" he sounds a little amused. 

"Mmeyes won't.. ffocus."

"Huh."

"...did youu give me benzo's?" she mumbles. "Feel... bllurry."

"Yeah." He sounds like he's smiling a little, and now he's speaking in a normal voice she does finally recognise him. Her patient of the past week. The one with the acid burns. He tilts her face so he can look into her eyes. Her pupils must be pretty blown out. "Might have overdone it."

"Llittle bit," she agrees. That's funny, too much of those and not enough of the really important drugs. Too bad he won't have those. She wouldn't mind being here if she had her suppressants. 

"...Boba…?" 

Now the adrenaline dump is over she can feel the drugs dragging her down again. Her head lols, and he cups her jaw while he wipes down her neck. It feels nice. She wants to nuzzle into his touch. He smells good. 

"That's right, Boba." He sounds approving. That's good, she likes making him sound like that, it makes her feel all safe and melty. "Nothing's gonna happen to you," he says. "I'll drop you off in a week or so, make sure that the Alliance can pick you up right away."

There's a big problem with that 'in a week or so' but Sephi is a little fuzzy on what it is right now because everything feels very good. He is standing very close by her side, letting her heavy head lean against his chest plate while he gently cleans an abrasion on her shoulder. She hums contentedly. She doesn't want him to stop. 

He guides her to lean forward and undoes the cuffs, moving her noodle-like arms into her lap and wiping them down. Sephi feels like a cat being groomed, bones going liquid. That's a funny thought. She could be purring right now. 

"Mmhh…. Pet me moore..."

She thinks he chuckles, but then he picks her up and that's even better. She clings and presses her face into his neck, humming at how good he smells. She whines a little when he puts her down, but then he strokes her hair, and it feels so good—she has no more thoughts. 


	3. Chapter 3

_Huh_.

Boba walks back to the pilot chair, arms feeling strangely empty. He's still not sure what just happened. 

The woman had started to come to from the stunner blast just when he was setting down on this backwater dustball. All he needed was a quick hour of peace while he checked the engines and the outer hull for any trackers or other sabotage while the rebels had had access to the _Slave I_. 

He'd given her a downer shot, the kind he very occasionally used himself if he was in pain and absolutely needed to sleep. Half the dose he used himself should have just kept her asleep a little longer, until he was back in hyperspace and could handle her waking up and finding herself taken hostage when he had expressly promised he wouldn't take her. 

Perhaps his banging around in the hull had woken her, because she'd come out disoriented but very determined. Boba hadn't _wanted_ to take her down that hard, but this was an unsavoury place and he could not afford for her to draw attention. He was vaguely impressed by how much of a fight she'd put up; he hadn't pegged her for a fighter during the time she'd cared for him in the infirmary. She certainly hadn't struggled much during his initial escape, going along with him as his hostage almost meekly. 

He has plenty of tricks in his arsenal to terrify a bounty into compliance, and he hates that he'd used them on her. He hadn't wanted to make her cry, and the dirt crusted on her face, on her lips, made him feel like scum. Not a good start to what he hopes would be a fairly amicable hostage situation where she willingly takes care of the burns on his back. 

He should have realised sooner how disoriented she was, that she was acting on pure instinct. He might not have been so harsh. Or left her sobbing face-down on the cold metal deck. At least it had helped contain her and get them away safely. 

Once he'd started to clean her up she'd completely—he was still a little startled by how fast she'd switched to trustingly leaning into his touch. Apparently the drugs had kicked back in as soon as her blood was no longer pounding with adrenaline. It had been hard to see any of her dark brown irises with how dilated her pupils were. 

Boba had been surprised to _like_ it, when she nuzzled into his touch, but that was hormones for you. When she pressed her face against his throat as if that was the most natural thing to do he'd—he'd felt an odd wash of protective instinct he had no idea how to handle. He didn't _know_ her. She was just a convenient hostage. 

His thoughts churn over something she'd mumbled, something about him not having the drugs she really needs. Is that what the urgent messages from the rebel alliance are about? 

When he sits in the pilot chair it's still a little warm from her body. There's another message, this time from the Princess herself. It demands the immediate safe return of Sephi Rimora, talking about lifesaving medication that Sephi needs within the next 24 hours. 

She also threatens him with dire consequences if he touches his hostage. Which... the princess knows, or should know, that he isn't the kind of man to touch an unwilling woman. Fuck, he's a natural Alpha, not a savage. 

He sends back a text-only reply, to send him the name of the medication she needs so he can procure it. And a reassurance that she's safe, that he'll drop her off on a world with an alliance presence in about a week. 

He receives a curt message that they will not be disclosing private medical information, and a repeat of the strongly worded demand that he drop her off immediately on the nearest alliance planet. 

Sephi wakes up a couple of hours later, bleary eyed and seemingly resigned to the situation. She cares for the burns on his back with the same professional touch she's had all along. 

It's very different for Boba, sitting up while it's happening, not nearly as vulnerable here on his own ship and in control of the situation. She's much closer like this, he can feel the brush of her exhales on his neck. He folds his hands in his lap to resist the impulse to trail the back of his fingers against her calves. 

She says nothing about earlier, either her escape attempt or her sudden drug induced clinginess. Boba isn't sure if she doesn't remember or if she's embarrassed. 

"Why did you take me?" she finally asks softly, the first time she speaks since she woke up. "You said you wouldn't."

"I wasn't—they stunned you, and I just—" and he'd instinctively caught her and pulled her to safety inside his ship, in that moment forgetting everything but protecting her. "People were shooting at us. I just reacted. Sorry."

She nods slightly. 

"What kind of medication do you need?" he asks her when she's done with his back.

Sephi blinks at him, face carefully blank. 

"How do you know about that?"

"You mentioned it, earlier. And—" he gestures at the comms system. "Your captain has been messaging. Even the Princess."

There's a flash of surprise in her eyes.

"If you tell me what it is, I can find you some," he reasons. It'll be annoying to have to stop again, but still better than trying to slap bacta patches onto a part of his back he can't reach while the few spots of acid left eat away further into his skin. That is definitely the reason he is not simply complying with the demand to drop her off. Not the way she'd gone all soft against him earlier and how he's inexplicably unhappy with the idea of letting her go. 

Sephi goes mute, turning away to fuss with the box of medical supplies. 

"Don't want to tell me?"

Silence. 

"Will you really die if you don't get it?"

Her head tilts. She doesn't look at him, but he can tell the care with which she chooses her answer. 

"I will be in a great deal of pain and discomfort, and no use to you at all."

She's not exactly lying as far as her body language says, but she's also not telling the truth. Boba wouldn't be one of the best bounty hunters around if he let people run important information around him. Fuck it, if they all want to avoid telling him more than they want to spare her misery, it's not on him. 

"Then if you're not willing to tell me, I guess we'll see how that goes."

He hadn't meant to sound callous, but there's an unexpected kick in his chest when she drops her head a little in resignation. Fuck, why does he _care_?

He sets up some bunkspace for her in the little cargo bay of the ship, so that there's at least some privacy and she doesn't have to sit there and watch him. It's only partially for her comfort; he must be particularly touch starved, because he enjoys it more than he should when she treats his back. The way she stands close, the way he can feel her breathing, her careful touches on his shoulders and back—the proximity of her is distracting him from his flying. 

His self discipline is usually better than that. Time to visit a pleasure house once this trip is over, get this need out of his system. 


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn't come out the next morning, so he goes to the cargo space, intending to give her a ration bar. He'd hoped she wouldn't just stay in there, that she'd be okay spending time around him, but he can't exactly force her. 

The hatch to the cargo bay slides open and the scent hits him like a sledgehammer to the chestplate. It's that same scent that has been turning his head since the first moment he saw her, only a hundred times stronger. 

Sephi is sitting on the ground, tucked in between two cargo crates with her knees defensively drawn up. She looks up at him with wide eyes, brown skin flushed dark, and looks absolutely miserable. 

Boba stares for a moment. 

He'd known she's an Omega, but it turns out she's not a latent one at all. She's the super rare kind who can go into heat, and who needs to take suppressants to block that. Especially with him nearby; the specific combination of their natures is designed to send both their hormones into overdrive. 

"Oh."

 _Fuck_. 

Well, that explains a lot. How he'd felt so drawn to her. How she'd gone from being terrified by him almost directly to melting into him as soon as he touched her face with his bare hands. He'd thought it had to be the drugs, but this makes far more sense. 

Given the advanced state of suppressants, you could go your whole life without knowing the degree of somebody's nature. Boba has never knowingly met a full Omega before. He'd just figured she was a latent, it's not unusual for women with latent Omega natures to have that kind of reaction to an Alpha. (It's also not unusual for them to freak out if they realise _he_ is not just a strong latent.) 

Full Alphas are rare, though not quite so rare as full Omegas. His father had been a full Alpha, and while that quality in his genome had been defanged for the clones, Boba was an uncorrected clone of his father. 

He's not aware of ever having met a full Omega, but then, it's highly unlikely one would have revealed themselves to him willingly. People like him, especially men, have a terrible reputation. It's not a desirable trait except in very niche fetish circles, where there's a roaring and dangerous trade in synth hormones and stimulants in an attempt to allow latents to experience the full extend of a heat, even if they still lack knots and the ability to bond. 

Boba has been with one latent Omega who could get most of the way in heat with those chemical inducers, for a single night. It was the most intense sex he'd ever had. 

A combination of their full expressions of their type, minus suppressants, is supposed to lead to something on an entirely different scale than even that. 

And an imporant difference: the sex worker who'd given him that experience had chosen to go into heat and had been paid exceedingly well for it—the price had covered a couple of subsequent days off for her to recover. 

Sephi is going into heat unwillingly, and it is likely the first time. In the company of an Alpha she did not choose. 

Small wonder her people wanted her back immediately, not in a week. 

Boba leaves the cargo space without another word and hits the hatch button so the door closes behind him. First thing he does is put on his helmet, air filters set to their highest setting. Then he sets the ventilation in the cargo space to high and the heat to low. She's going to be sweating out of her skin soon enough, but it may help a little. The helmet filters aren't going to be enough when the suppressants have worked their way out of her system and she hits full heat, but it might make it easier to have a conversation in this early stage. 

He sets a course for an uninhabited moon that will let them stay in a safe orbit for a couple of days. 

When he comes into the cargo space and closes the door on them both, she presses herself back against the bulkhead. She looks scared, and he'd be surprised if he couldn't smell it on her either, without the helmet. 

"I turned up the venting and lowered the heat here," he explains with a gesture in the direction of the cockpit. "And the helmet filters will help me keep a clear head."

He sits down with his back to the door. He can still smell her, his body is taking notice, but he can push it to the back of his mind. 

Sephi is quiet,wary, and he thinks wistfully about when she all but melted into his touch. 

"Explains why you wouldn't say about the meds, huh?" he says with humour. Telling him exactly what she needed would have betrayed that this was coming, and she might have been hoping that he'd let her go right until it couldn't be hidden anymore. 

"...sorry," she says in a small voice. "You wouldn't have been able to find the right ones unless you went to a core world." She sounds scared. He wants to wrap her into his arms, tell her he's not angry. 

He shrugs instead.

"I understand hiding it. People knowing makes you vulnerable." He certainly knows of people who'd sell her for a fortune to some remote resort for super rich pervs. She was right to be cautious. "Sorry for putting you into this situation."

"I'll assume you didn't know."

"No. I thought you were a latent until.." he makes a vague gesture. "When I walked in earlier."

She nods, seeming to accept that. 

"How long until it's fully…" 

"If I'm counting right, about eight to twelve hours before the suppressants are totally out of my system."

"Have you been through this before?"

She shakes her head. "Only read about it."

"I've been with somebody in chemical heat, so I know a little, but—" 

What the research says is that the two of them are a rare, optimal combination. Her heat will be maximal with his presence, and he can—and will want to— knot her, which a latent Alpha could not do. It's likely to be much more intense for the both of them. Time to be practical while she's still lucid. 

"Two options. Could lock you in here with a stack of ration bars, a lot of water, and something sufficiently phallic—" she huffs surprised laughter just like he hoped. "I'm sure I have a billy club or something," he shrugs. "And I'll stay out."

He'll be panting like a dog just on the other side of the door, but that's his own problem. He has a timed lock neither of them could open in the heat of the moment. 

"You'd do that?" she tilts her head. Her pupils are dilating, and she looks flushed, but she sounds curious, maybe surprised. He doesn't think she's scared anymore. 

"Won't be having an easier time on this side of the door than you will be having, but yes."

"I thought full Alphas… the hormones…"

"Anybody who tells you it turns them into a slavering beast is just using it as an excuse to rape," he says, quoting his father. "Not saying it'll be a breeze, but if you don't want me to touch you, I won't."

"And the other option?" she sounds a little breathless, like she knows damn well what that option is but just wants to hear him say it. 

"We both eat a bunch of ration bars, put the mattress on the floor, and don't lock the door."

She huffs an amused breath. Her nails tap against a cargo crate. 

"Can I do something before I decide?"

"Of course," he says immediately. He's not in the habit of granting unconditional yes, but there's not a lot he'd refuse her right now. He got her into this mess, he feels honour-bound to get her through it in whatever way she needs. 

He hopes that's not sitting on the other side of a locked door, masturbating desperately while developing a lifelong fetish that gets him instantly erect whenever he sees a billy club. 

She gets up and comes over to him on shaky knees. He can tell she's sweated through her scrub top, it's clinging to her. To his utter surprise she kneels down astride his legs, all but climbing into his lap. Fuck, the helmet's air filters are not doing it when she's _this_ close. She smells amazing. His hands come up automatically to settle on her hips. He wants to rip off his helmet and shove his face against her neck, lick her sweat. 

"I want to kiss," she says, very matter of fact. "While I still have some judgement left in me."

He tosses his helmet to the side before she's even done talking, and groans low in his throat at the scent of her, ten times stronger without the helmet filters. _Fuck_. He is _very_ screwed if she decides she wants the door locked between them. She isn't grinding on him, but he is extremely aware of the heat at the apex of her thighs, so close to where his erection strains against his flight suit. 

Her nostrils flare, and for a long moment they just stare into each other's eyes and breathe each other in. Boba's hands shake and clench on her hips to stop himself from grabbing the back of her head and dragging her into a kiss. Showing that he can control himself and that he is leaving her choices is clearly helping her not be afraid, so not he just needs to… well, keep that up. 

Thankfully she does finally lean in to press her lips against his. Her lips are soft and slick and warm, and it takes less than a second for him to groan low in his chest and pull her closer against him. 

"Fuck, girl, if you want the door locked," he gasps when they finally break for breath, "please decide quick so I can go stand under an ice shower."

"I don't want the door locked," she says absently, pulling the collar of his flight suit to the side. 

"Thank fuck for that," he says, heartfelt. 

"Mm-hmm."

He grips her hips again, and his thumb on her hipbone reminds him of something. Things they should talk while they still have a modicum of sense. 

"You got an implant?" Fuck, what he if gets her pregnant? He's got his own implant, but Alpha and Omega physiology in heat is its own thing, and isn't always susceptible to what works for normal circumstances. She should probably still get checked up after to be sure. 

"Yeah, other side," she murmurs, steering his hand to where he can feel the little bump under her skin. 

"Me too. So we should be okay," he says, hoping it's true. He grips her harder to stop her from grinding against him. She doesn't even seem aware she's doing it. "Anything else I should know? Anything I should not do?"

"Whatever I ask for is okay to do," she licks the sweat at his neck and moans softly, and Boba has a full body shiver. "But don't you fucking dare getting us pair bonded."

That's fair, the last thing she needs is to be tied to a bounty hunter. Even though he's rapidly forgetting why it would be a bad thing for him, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh. This is the leadup I wrote for a smut scene I'm not comfortable posting. So unless I get wildly inspired to write something new for this, which I don't see happening right now, this is it. Sorry about that. 
> 
> I did have a vague idea of how I would continue this if I had the spoons to start a whole new long story (which I don't) so here, have some stuff so you can imagine the story from here:   
> hot and surprisingly affectionate sex, aftercare by a man who is new to the concept but is feeling very moved to give it his best. They manage not to do the bonding thing in the heat of the moment but the next day they still want to, so picture some more sex and then bonding. Sephi decides she's just fine staying with this guy, thanks for the effort Alliance. Boba ends up bringing her back so she can have a very uncomfortable interview with Leia to make sure she really is doing this of her free will. Meanwhile Boba paces nervously in his ship, hoping that a) she really will come back, and b) they will let him go instead of taking him prisoner. Leia admits that she can't keep Sephi, and manages to get some agreement of working for the Alliance out of Boba in exchange for letting them both go. Sephi gets her stuff from her quarters and they fly off together. Fade to black!


End file.
